Physicist: Universe May Be a “Strange Loop” of Self-Simulating Consciousness

 When it involves cosmology, astronomy, and physics, there's no shortage of off-the-wall arguments and hypotheses. While new discoveries from the first moments of the large Bang and quantum and high-energy physics still amaze us and fill within the gaps of our mysterious universe, there remains a shocking number of questions we still can’t answer.

The most fundamental of those questions revolve around “why anything” and “why consciousness.” Why is there anything here at all? What primal state of existence could have possibly birthed all that matter, energy, and time, all that everything? and the way did consciousness arise—is it some fundamental proto-state of the universe itself, or an emergent phenomenon that's purely neurochemical and material in nature?

A new physics hypothesis attempts to answer both questions at an identical time with a brand new spin on panpsychism that weds aspects of Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Argument with something called “timeless emergentism.” The hypothesis, outlined during a new paper by a team of researchers at the Quantum Gravity Research institute, is termed the “panpsychism self-simulation model,” and while the authors certainly aren’t earning any points for intellectual modesty, their idea could be capable of peacefully mapping a number of the universe’s most wild conundrums.

The first pieces of this puzzle you'll have already heard of: the Simulation Argument could be a pop-culture staple now, most famously popularized when Elon Musk claimed it’s way more likely that we live in an exceeding simulation created by a complicated intelligence. Then there's the age-old belief in panpsychism, which posits that the whole universe could be a form of plan conscious entity in which even ordinary matter is imbued with proto-consciousness.

The new argument gets to eliminate the middleman and suggests that pain consciousness itself is generating the simulations, not advanced aliens, which the universe is one giant “mental self-stimulation.”

The paper, titled “The Self-Simulation Hypothesis Interpretation of quantum physics,” says the physical universe may be a “strange loop” that may self-generate new sub-realities in an almost infinite hierarchy of tiers in-laid with simulated realities of conscious experience, quite a sort of a psychic Matryoshka doll.

You’re still left with the mystery of the physical origins of this self-generating consciousness, to which the researchers reply that the solution is truly non-material. The paper argues that universal consciousness “self-actualizes” employing a natural algorithm called “the principle of efficient language.”

In other words, the universe is creating itself through thought, willing itself into existence on a perpetual loop that efficiently uses all mathematics and fundamental particles at its disposal.

The universe, they say, was always here (timeless emergentism) and is like one grand thought that makes mini thoughts, called “code-steps or actions”, again sort of a Matryoshka doll.

Quantum Gravity physicist David Chester broke down some recent findings they feel bolster the argument: “While many scientists presume materialism to be true, we believe that quantum physics may provide hints that our reality could be a mental construct. Recent advances in quantum gravity, like seeing spacetime emergent via a hologram, is also a touch that spacetime isn't fundamental. this can be also compatible with ancient Hermetic and Indian philosophy. In a sense, the mental construct of reality creates spacetime to efficiently understand itself by creating a network of subconscious entities that may interact and explore the totality of possibilities.”

 The paper also suggests that the aim of this single looping, self-generating consciousness is to explore and develop meaning through information. They also discuss future prospects, like studying lucid dreams to raised understand simulations and also the idea of developing consciousness that doesn't require matter in any respect.